


A Kiss With A Fist

by skarletfyre



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Chem Trip, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 05:52:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5528462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarletfyre/pseuds/skarletfyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a Christmas gift for  <a href="http://viperbooty.tumblr.com">viperbooty</a>, feat. his Sole Survivor, Wyatt</p>
<p>On what should have been a routine report back to a group of settlers in need things don't go according to plan, and Wyatt's Psycho habit gets the better of him. Unfortunately, one of his lovers is caught in the crossfire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kiss With A Fist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [viperbooty](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=viperbooty).



> pictures/art of Wyatt is [here](http://viperbooty.tumblr.com/post/135758351404/wyatt-warm-up-hauha), [here](http://viperbooty.tumblr.com/post/135688889409/disgusting-laughter-i-found-a-way-to-get-better), [and](http://viperbooty.tumblr.com/post/134380808004/well-everyone-meet-wyatt-my-sole-survivor) [here](http://viperbooty.tumblr.com/post/135666833129/here-have-work-doodle-of-wyatt-exclaiming-that-he)

It was raining again, because why wouldn't it be?

Wyatt was getting tired of being wet. No matter how he adjusted his armor or how tight he fastened the collar of his leathers, the cool droplets always managed to find their way down the back of his shirt, stinging faintly as they rolled down his skin. Not quite the 'acid rain' they'd been warned about in the old days, but it was a far cry from the gentle, chilly drizzles he'd grown up with. It beat snow, though. Anything was better than snow.

“I actually hate this.”

Wyatt looked over his shoulder with a lopsided grin.

“Not a fan of the rain, Sunshine?”

His smaller companion was trudging unhappily along behind him, leather boots sloshing and splashing noisily through the standing water. Hancock's arms were crossed tightly over his thin chest and there was a sour expression on what was left of his face.

“I literally just said I hate this,” he grumbled. “You know we could be inside right now. Under a roof and not out here getting soaked to the bone. I mean, I'm always a sucker for romantic strolls with handsome men, but this doesn't seem entirely worth it.”

“Aw, you think I'm handsome?” Wyatt teased. He turned to walk backwards so that he could more easily grin at his friend and lover. Hancock struggled to continue frowning at him.

“Possible handsomeness notwithstanding,” the ghoul said, raising his voice over the rumbling of distant thunder, “if this weather doesn't start clearing up in the next hour, I'm going to turn around and head back to that cozy little cabin we passed by the lake-”

“The one with the mirelurks?”

“-the one with the _dead_ mirelurks, and hole up there until it stops raining. These farmers or settlers or whoever it is we're helping can keep their caps for a little while longer, don't you think?”

Wyatt's grin melted into a grimace at the reminder of their current task. He'd been running errands for the Minutemen all week long, clearing out ghouls and gunners alike all in the name of protecting the settlers that had come to depend on him. And while he was happy to help – really, he was – he was getting tired of all this running around from one damn end of the Commonwealth to other in exchange for nothing more than a handful of caps or the occasional fruit or vegetable. Would it kill the farmers to take matters into their own hands every once in a while?

Actually, now that he thought about it, it probably _would_ kill them. Which was why they hired him in the first place.

“It's for a good cause, Hancock,” Wyatt said sincerely. “We're helping people. You _like_ helping people.”

Hancock made a noise in the back of his throat.

“What I _like_ is spending time with _you._ You know, maybe some place warm and dry, in front of a crackling fire... doped out of our minds, lying on a yao guai skin rug... doesn't that sound better that slogging around in the cold?”

“Yes... but I don't think Nick would be up for the chems...

“Yeah, well, the circuitboard isn't here,” the ghoul said with a small smirk. “Besides, we could always make it up to him.”

Wyatt thought it over, rubbing his bearded chin in mock contemplation.

“We're almost to the settlement, you know. Maybe if the farmers are feeling grateful enough they'll offer us a bed for the night. Dunno about the bearskin rug, but I'm sure we'd manage.”

“I dunno,” Hancock said wearily, but his expression read as nothing but mischief. “I could _really_ go for some fun on a fancy carpet, if you know what I mean.”

Wyatt let out a bark of laughter and turned back around to walk facing forward. Truthfully he would have _loved_ to turn back and find somewhere to bed down for the night with his partner, settler's gratitude and reward be damned. But what was left of his sense of civic duty compelled him to continue making this final trek out to the poor civilian hosehold, just to let them down they'd be safe enough to rest easy for the night.

At least, he thought they would have been safe. He'd cleared out the raider that were bothering them after all. That was supposed to have been the end of it.

They crested the hill, and saw smoke on the horizon.

“Something's wrong,” Hancock muttered, coming to stand beside him. “That's a lot of fire, and something tells me the farmers didn't set up a bonfire for us.”

“Get your gun ready,” Wyatt said, and looked back when he heard the familiar click of the safety being switched off. Hancock already had his rifle at the ready. He smiled briefly.

“Way ahead of you, pal. Let's move.”

Wyatt had never been one for stealth or subterfuge. He kept his eyes peeled for movement, but for the most part he just strode forward, straight toward the column of black smoke rising grimly in the already dark sky. He could smell gasoline and gunshot residue, even from this far away. That was bad. All of this was very, very bad.

The first raider didn't see them approaching. She was leaning on a fence post with her back to the road, drinking a bottle of the purified water Wyatt had traded to the small group of farmers mere days ago. Wyatt took a deep breath and hefted his rocket powered sledge hammer. He brought it down right on top of her head.

“What was that?” a man's voice yelled, alerted by the crash. Hancock pushed forward, finding cover behind a generator as lights started to flicker on inside the small homestead. Wyatt wiped a chunk of spatter from his face and kept moving.

“Get out here!” he shouted, fumbling in his pocket for a hit of Psycho. He didn't know how many were in the house, but this amount of destruction was too much for a small group of two or three.

The farm exploded in a flurry of movement.

Two armored raiders burst out the front door and another appeared around from the back, guns blazing. Hancock downed one with a bullet to the throat, and Wyatt sprinted toward the others.

The chems made his blood pound in his ears as he ran, bringing the hammer down in a devastating arc in front of him. A raider screamed and Wyatt heard the crunch of bone, immediately followed by a sharp pain in his own shoulder. The enemy he'd missed had pulled a knife. They were quick, but he was quicker. They cried out through their sack mask as Wyatt kicked their legs out from under them, powering up the shock charge on his sledge before bringing it down again. The blow left a crack in the concrete porch.

“ _You're dead!”_

Wyatt rolled to the side as a blast of buckshot tore through the air where his head had been seconds before. He heard the raider's shout of frustration and used it against them to pinpoint where the bastard was standing, just inside the door, using the entryway for cover.

He swung, bolstered by the Psycho, and crashed the hammer straight through the wall. The raider went flying, and didn't get back up.

And then suddenly _Wyatt_ was flying. The missile blast blew him backward out the front door, landing hard in the bloody dirt with a fierce ringing in his ears. Something grabbed him and he struggled.

“Get up!” Hancock was yelling in his ear, trying to drag him to his feet. “Dammit, get up, quick!”

Wyatt struggled to his feet as best he could, gasping when he felt a stimpack being shot into his shoulder. Hancock's doing.

The raider with the missile launcher appeared fuzzily in the ruined doorway of the farmhouse, standing taller than any man had a right to be. Wyatt blinked furiously, wondering if these raiders had teamed up with a super mutant or something. Then he realized what it was he was seeing.

Power armor. _Shit._

“Go!” he said, shoving the ghoul away from him back toward cover. He looked around wildly for his super sledge, realizing it wasn't in his hands anymore, likely knocked away by the force of the blast. It was on the ground a few feet in front of him, between him and armored raider. Double shit.

Wyatt slammed another syringe of Psycho into his arm.

Maybe it was the double dosage. Maybe it was the stimpack that set it off, or some built up allergic reaction that had been building up inside him. Maybe it was just a bad dose. But whatever it was, it _worked._

A primal roar tore from his throat as he lunged, scooping the eighty pound weapon into his hands and lifting it as if it were nothing more than a toy. The solid steel hammer crunched into the raider's armor and arm with a noise like a tin can being crushed, knocking the launcher away before he even had a chance to try and block it. The strength in Wyatt's arms was incredible, the power coursing through his veins burned like battery acid and made his head pound with every move he made.

The second swing crippled the raider's right leg and made him howl. The third caved in the chest of his armor with the gruesome crunch of snapping bones and ruptured organs. The fourth turned his head to paste. The fifth swing of the hammer was just because he couldn't stop.

Every breath felt like nettles in his lungs, a million little jabs and stabs to his insides. Every movement felt like sand shifting under his skin. He should his head, trying to clear the bloody tinge from his vision, but that only made it worse. It made his brain wobble in his skull.

He staggered back unsteadily, panting with the very effort of drawing breath. Everything was quiet now. The screams and gunshots had stopped, but his body was still aflame with the effects of the chem. He needed to move. He needed to _fight._

“Wyatt?”

The voice came from behind him, low and familiar. It _should_ have been familiar. But the sounds with distorted, twisted in his head. The crackling of the fire pit sounded like the snapping of bones.

_Wyatt._

Who the fuck was Wyatt?

“Hey, look at me, are you-”

Something moved out of the corner of his bloodshot eyes, blurred and red. His hammer was in motion before he could even think of doing anything else.

In the back of his mind, something was screaming at him to stop. Or maybe the screaming was coming from the thing – the red thing – that he'd just knocked ten feet away from him. It landed heavily in the dust. Still moving.

His knuckles were white around the handle of super sledge. One more hit and the red would be still. One more hit, one more rush of adrenaline as he brought the hammer down, and everything would be over.

His arm jerked wildly, a painful muscle spasm. The power sledge fell heavily to the ground at his feet as everything throbbed around him. That sound, that awful fucking sound, everywhere and not coming from anything that he could crush or kill or hurt to make it _shut up._ Nothing he could do but get away from it.

He remembered running. The land blurring past him, running together in a haze of grey.

He remembered his skin crawling, itching to pieces like insects eating him alive and burrowing into his flesh under his armor.

He remembered screaming, just because he could.

He didn't remember blacking out.

\----------------------------------------

Wyatt was woken up by the urge to wretch.

He rolled just in time, coughing and gagging onto the dusty carpet beneath him. His throat burned. His lips were chapped and dry, cracking painfully when he grimaced. Every part of him ached.

When he eventually managed to push himself into an upright position, leaning heavily on the nearby dresser for support, Wyatt took a moment to look down at himself and his surroundings. He wasn't wearing his metal armor, that was the first thing he noticed. And the leathers he wore under them were badly torn in places; across his chest and stomach, and one arm was so badly slashed it was nothing more than tatters. Were those... _claw marks?_

The room he was in was uncomfortably familiar. Ruined and ravaged by time, but he recognized the placement of the furniture. The colour of what was left of the wallpaper. The ancient, threadbare clothes, still neatly folded where he'd left them in the open closet. Wyatt's stomach did a funny little flop when he realized exactly where he was.

Home.

“Can't believe I'm saying this,” said a gruff voice, familiar and very close by, “but I think you might look even worse than I do.”

Wyatt turned wildly and found the source of the voice. Nick, sitting in the doorway of the bedroom, in a chair he must have dragged in from the kitchen. His yellow eyes glowed under the brim of his trademark fedora, narrowed inscrutably.

“Nick,” Wyatt gasped, trying and failing to get to his feet. He collapsed heavily back again the dresser. “Wh- what- what happened?”

In lieu of answering, the synth detective made a dramatic show of lighting himself a cigarette. Smoke wafted slowly out of the holes in his neck and the side of his head, hanging in the air in a grey haze.

“I was rather hoping you could tell me that.”

The two of them stared at each other across the bedroom. The sounds of Sanctuary – hammering, footsteps, friends and companions chatting and laughing together in the midday sun – filtered in through the gaps of the walls and roof. A background soundtrack to the quiet confrontation raging inside the house.

Wyatt tried to understand what had happened to him. Why he was here, of all places, and how he'd gotten in in the first place. He shouldn't have been anywhere near Sanctuary. Last he remembered, he was out on his way to a farmstead in the northeast with-

“John,” Wyatt said suddenly, remembering. “Where's John?”

Nick blinked slowly at him.

“Again, I was... hoping _you'd_ have the answer to that question.”

Wyatt lurched to his feet and swayed in place, fighting the urge to be sick again. Something was wrong. Something was so, so wrong here. He'd done something last night. The knowledge clawed at the back of his mind, tantalizingly close, but hidden. Locked behind a torrid haze of blood and bone, and rage. He remembered fighting. He remembered running, and shouting. He remembered crushing a suit of power armor like a soda can, and a bright flash of light. And then, faintly, he remembered...

“I hit him.”

The recollection made him cold. He looked to his synth companion in despair.

“Nick, I- I think I hit him, but-”

Red. He remembered red moving toward him and lashing out at him. Red, the colour of Hancock's stolen, symbolic coat. Wyatt rubbed his hands over his face and felt them shaking. He almost jumped out of his skin when a pair of cool hands – one whole, one a skeletal frame of metal – were laid firmly on his shoulders. Valentine stood right in front of him when moment's before he'd been sitting across the room. Wyatt kept forgetting how quietly he could move.

Yellow, inhuman eyes locked to his as Nick looked down at him, a hard look on his ruined face.

“Where?” he asked. He was using his Detective Voice. Wyatt swallowed.

“There was a farm,” he said, speaking quickly and unable to slow himself down. “We were trying to get back to the settlers to let them know the raider hideout was taken care of, that they were safe, b-but some of the raiders must have gotten away or been out because they were there waiting for us. They killed everybody Nick, the farmers, the settlers, the brahmin, everything was dead and they were trying to set up and live there. They were burning the bodies. Hancock, he- he saved me. One of them had power armor, and a rocket launcher, and I didn't have any guns with me so I just- I took a lot of Psycho Nick, not even a lot but something was wrong with that last batch I swear, I was so _angry,_ even when I'd killed them all I wanted more to kill. And John, I don't know what happened but he was there with me and I don't- Nick, I don't know what I did- I think I- I-”

“Where is the farm, Wyatt?” Nick asked sharply, never blinking. “Tell me where you last remember seeing him.”

_Alive_ was the word Wyatt heard him nearly tack on the end. _Where did you last see him alive?_

“East. It was to the east, just a little homestead. I don't even know how I got here, Nick.”

“You showed up last night covered in blood and scratches, started screaming at anyone who got too close to you. Scared the hell out of some traders. I don't expect they'll be back any time soon. Then you came in here and kicked everybody out of the living room, started tearing down the little barricade you set up to the back of the house. Jun came and found me and told me what was going on. I tried talking to you, to figure out what the hell was wrong, but... Well, you didn't seem very interested in talking.”

For the first time Wyatt really looked at Nick, and saw the bloody hand print on the front of his trench coat. His eyes flicked to the chair where the synth had been sitting, and the little box of tools beside it. His stomach dropped.

“Did I- did I hurt you too?”

“Nothing I couldn't fix,” Nick said, rolling his shoulder slightly. “I left you alone after that. Figured the least I could do was sit by and make sure you didn't hurt yourself in your sleep.”

“Nick... I'm so sorry, I- I didn't-”

“You weren't in control,” Nick told him. A kinder way of saying he was _out of_ control. “And I'm fine, so don't you worry about me. What I need you to do is take me to the farm where you fought the raiders, Wyatt. Can you do that? Do you remember where it is?”

Wyatt nodded shakily. Yes, he remembered. And even if he didn't know all the landmarks, his Pip-Boy – which was mercifully still attached to his arm – would be able to guide them there. Nick patted him on the arm.

“Good. Let's go, now.”

\-------------------------------------------

It took most of the day walking to get back to the little farmstead. Nick was able to steer them away from the worst of the trouble, skirting around a patrol of super mutants and a gunner hideout. The only real fighting they did was with a small swarm of Bloatflies. Nick made short work of them.

He hadn't given Wyatt a weapon. Wyatt didn't blame him.

The body pile had burned down and stopped smoking by the time the two of them arrived. Charred corpses and cracked, blackened bones jutting from the dust at sickening angles marked the place where the farmers had made their last stand to protect their homes.

Then there were the bodies of the raiders. Mangled, ground into the dirt beyond any sort of recognition. The woman by the fence that Wyatt had hit first was slumped on the ground, her skull burst open like a watermelon dropped from a great height. By the front door three bodies lay in a heap. One had it's legs twisted in a way that made Wyatt's own ache in sympathy, and the other was crumpled inside and covered in broken boards from where the hammer had crashed through the wall. The third and largest body, trapped in what was left of a once intact suit of power armor, was so badly mangled that Wyatt couldn't bear to look at it.

There was a scorch mark on the ground, from the rocket that had nearly killed him. The place that Hancock had pulled him to safety and saved his life.

“This is where I hit him,” Wyatt said out loud, looking down at his feet. Nick was walking around the front of the property, taking everything in like he did with every crime scene he came across. He turned around when Wyatt spoke, looking at him. Then he also looked at the ground.

“I don't see him. I don't seen him anywhere here.”

“That doesn't mean anything, though. There's bears, or- or ferals that could have-”

“None of the other bodies have been touched,” Nick said, quickly cutting off that line of thinking. “There's plenty of meat here, I highly doubt that Hancock's gnarly gristle would be anything's first choice. So if he's not here, it's likely because he got up and left.”

“You think so?” Wyatt asked, stepping forward and nervously licking his lips. “You think he's okay?”

“Well, I don't know about _okay._ How hard do you think you hit him?”

Wyatt's memory flashed suddenly; a red body, flying backward through the air with the force of the blow. Crumpling into the grass in a heap.

But it had moved. He remembered, very clearly, that it – _Hancock_ – was still moving.

So he was alive. He was definitely, absolutely alive the last time Wyatt had seen him, which meant he was probably _still_ alive. Just not here. He must have gotten away. He wouldn't stay in the house with the bodies, not unless he absolutely had to. Hancock didn't like to be around death, no matter how much anyone might think otherwise. So he must have left the farm. But where would he go?

“The cabin,” Wyatt blurted. “The cabin by the lake with the mirelurks.”

“What about it? You didn't say anything about stopping at a cabin, Wyatt.”

“We didn't stop, just talked about it. Hancock said he wanted to go back and wait out the rain having sex on the floor and then we could make it up to you later. I mean, uh- well, he pointed out the cabin. It was empty, but the door was locked. We killed all the crabs but we couldn't get inside. He might have been able to.”

“Where's the cabin? Is it far?”

“No, it's just a couple miles away from here. He could've made it Nick. We have to go and look for him there.”

“Hm, I agree. And let's hope you actually killed all those mirelurks after all. Or else he might have been in for a nasty surprise.”

They made considerably better time getting to the cabin by the lake than they had getting to the farm. Wyatt and Hancock had already come through there the night before, and cleared out every living thing in their path. Nothing nasty jumped out to slow him and Nick down.

The cabin looked exactly as Wyatt had last seen it, complete with the cracked open shells of several dead mirelurks crumpled on the shore outside. Only one small but very important detail had changed.

The door was open.

Or not so much 'open' as 'no longer on its hinges.' The gunshot holes in the door frame painted a very clear picture of what had happened. Hancock had likely blown it open after getting fed up with the difficult lock.

“Hancock!” Wyatt called, running recklessly toward the cabin before Nick could stop him. “John, are you in there? John?”

“Stop shouting,” Nick scolded as he'd caught up. He had his pistol out and at the ready. “You never know who might-”

“Well, look who finally turned up.”

Both Nick and Wyatt stopped dead in their tracks. Hancock, alive and well, had appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame and smiling at them. He looked no worse for wear, except the for the left arm that he was favouring close to his chest. But he was _alive._

“Oh my god,” Wyatt said, staggering forward toward him. “Oh, god, you're okay. Hancock, I'm- I'm so sorry, I thought- I though I'd-”

He couldn't take it. Wyatt fell to the ground as he reached the ghoul, kneeling in the mud at his feet. He wrapped both arms around Hancock's middle and buried his head in his thin stomach.

“Oh, don't be like that...” Wyatt felt fingers brushing through his filthy hair and squeezed his eyes shut to stop from crying. “Wyatt, c'mon. You know I'm made of tougher stuff than that.”

“Is your arm alright?” Nick asked, the squelch of his shoes coming up behind Wyatt.

“It's been better,” Hancock confessed. Wyatt let out a muffle sob into his abdomen. “Wyatt, I swear, I'm really okay. Really... Come on and get up, you're getting all muddy. Valentine, you wanna-?”

Wyatt heard a mechanical sigh, and then a pair of strong arms were tucked under his armpits and pulling him to his feet while he blubbered. Then a pair of weathered palms were cupping his face and pulling him down, and a pair of warm, oddly smooth and achingly familiar lips pressed briefly to his own.

“I'm okay, Wyatt,” Hancock said quietly, his black eyes filled with concern and reassurance as he pulled away. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I'm getting b-better,” Wyatt said. He was crying so hard he couldn't see straight, so powerful was the relief washing over him. They were okay. Everybody was together and okay.

Hancock patted his cheek fondly.

“Maybe lay off the Psycho for a while, yeah?”

“I think that's an excellent idea,” Nick said loudly, laying his metal hand on Wyatt's shoulder and giving it a firm squeeze. “You've been taking too much of that stuff for too long. Frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened sooner.”

“He's got a point, Wy. How about you just stick to Buffout for a while instead?”

Wyatt continued to cry, if only because he couldn't stop himself, while Nick sighed heavily in frustration. Hancock, living and breathing and smiling at him Hancock, just laughed and started to pull them both into the little cabin.

And whadya know. It had a bearskin rug after all.


End file.
